Temporary building construction to make cities more sustainable: An innovative “Square Box” proposal

The so-called temporary architecture has become an instrument to respond to the needs of citizens, often changing within the contemporary reality. The analysis of the state of the art has underlined a growing interest of the scientific community toward these structures, especially in terms of sustainability and containment of the carbon footprint. Therefore, in this article a methodology has been illustrated to realize a temporary building called “Square Box”, that is a modular box-like element able to contain other component elements which, ac cording to deployment maneuvers, can allow the easy increase of the surfaces for the sale. The element, as it was conceived, is part of the "closed cycle" construction systems, in which the uniqueness of the model allows to optimize a possible industrialization process. The approach starts from the analysis of the state of the art to identify the design criteria to be adopted in the development of the innovative temporary module and to determine the search gap. After, there is the design and prototyping of the Square Box. Finally, Life Cycle Assessment provided for a quantitative assessment on greenhouse gas emissions following the ISO 14040–14044 standards. The methodology also provides for monitoring but this last phase is undergoing and it will be explained in a future article. The main conclusions are that numerous benefits are offered by the temporary structures designed according to the criteria followed in the Square Box concept, in terms of reducing con struction times on site, impacts on the environment as well as stimulating the recycling and reuse of the materials used in a circular economy perspective aimed at extending the life cycle of temporary structures.